Shooting Memorial, Sex Offender Ban, Jail Closure, and Freeway Widening Before Council Tonight

It’s a busy night for the Seal Beach City Council. 

• City leaders will consider a proposed ordinance banning registered sex offenders from the city's parks to create a ‘Child Safety Zone’ around the parks.

• The council will also decide whether to continue operating the city jail. The pay-to-stay jail is operating at $94,000 deficit in the 2011-12 fiscal year. However, police officials advocate for keeping the jail open because it saves officers time from having to book suspects at the Orange County jail, ensuring that officers will spend hundreds more hours per year patrolling Seal Beach streets.

• City leaders will consider spending $81,000 for s traffic and noise study north of the San Diego (405) Freeway. The move follows a series of community complaints about the traffic impact caused by The Shops at Rossmoor and the Target Center as well as the ongoing West County Connector Project. Namely, residents in neighboring Rossmoor have been vocal in objecting to the traffic impact that could come from proposed changes at the shopping center, including the addition of a Toys R Us, Babies R Us, Staples and PetSmart.

• The Council is poised to consider spending $40,000 on two contracts for firms to conduct an engineering and environmental review of the county’s plans to widen the 405 Freeway. Still in the planning stages, the county is looking at some major changes to the freeway including possibilities such as adding one to two lanes between Euclid Street and the 605 or adding a toll lane to the freeway. In previous freeway projects, the city has fought county proposals deemed destructive to the community, including a 2001 proposal that would have expanded the freeway by destroying six homes in College Park East.

• The Council is slated to consider spending $30,000 to design a memorial for the eight people killed in the Salon Meritage shooting. The council is also expected to consider a new timeline for the project, which would push the ribbon cutting for the memorial back from the one-year anniversary of the shooting in October to the spring of 2013. The timeline change comes at the requests of the victims’ families, who asked for the opportunity to mourn in private on the day of the anniversary.

Tonight’s meeting is at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 211 8^th Street.